Hidden History -- In The Making

HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE IN POSSESSION OF VIDEO, AUDIO RECORDINGS FROM GIULIANI ASSOCIATE LEV PARNAS

The material submitted to the committee includes audio, video and photos that include Giuliani and Trump.

The House Intelligence Committee is in possession of audio and video recordings and photographs provided to the committee by Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly played a key role in assisting him in his efforts to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

The material submitted to the committee includes audio, video and photos that include Giuliani and Trump. It was unclear what the content depicts and the committees only began accessing the material last week.

“We have subpoenaed Mr. Parnas and Mr. [Igor] Fruman for their records. We would like them to fully comply with those subpoenas,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN Sunday, with a committee spokesperson adding they would not elaborate beyond the chairman’s comments.

An attorney for Parnas, Joseph A. Bondy, also declined to comment, directing ABC News to a statement released earlier in the day Sunday reading in part, “Mr. Parnas has vociferously and publicly asserted his wish to comply with his previously issued subpoena and to provide the House Intelligence Committee with truthful and important information that is in furtherance of justice, not to obstruct it.” The statement goes on to say, “His evidence and potential testimony is non-partisan, and not intended to be part of a battle between the left and the right, but rather an aid in the determination by our government of what is in the best interests of our nation.”

Sources tell ABC News the tapes were provided as part of that congressional subpoena issued to Parnas, and the former Giuliani ally also provided a number of documents both in English and Ukrainian to the committee in two separate productions, sources told ABC News. However, some of the material sought by congressional investigators is already in possession of federal investigators within the Southern District of New York and thus held up from being turned over, according to sources familiar with the matter. Parnas’ associate, Fruman, has not cooperated with the committee.

Parnas, a Ukraine-born, American businessman, was subpoenaed last month by House committees at the same time as Fruman. The two men had previously announced through their attorney at the time that they would not be complying with the subpoena. Separate from the House impeachment probe, Parnas and Fruman were arrested earlier this fall at the Dulles International Airport just outside of Washington, with one-way international tickets, and charged in a criminal campaign finance case in the Southern District of New York.

Accused of allegedly circumventing campaign finance laws against straw donations and foreign contributions, Parnas and Fruman pleaded not guilty. According to the indictment, Parnas sought then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s ouster earlier this year along with his efforts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate the president’s political rival, matters that have repeatedly emerged in the House impeachment inquiry. Giuliani’s relationship with Parnas and Fruman is the subject of a criminal investigation in the Southern District of New York, that case will have its next court date early next month.

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CHINA – THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE – THE BRIDGE THAT SPANS THE WORLD

China’s New Silk Road is creating a multi-polar world, where all participants will benefit.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), also called the New Silk Road, is based on a 2,100-year-old trade route between the Middle East and Eastern Asia, called the Silk Road. It wound its ways across the huge landmass Eurasia to the most eastern parts of China. It favored trading, based on the Taoist philosophy of harmony and peaceful coexistence – trading in the original sense of the term, an exchange with “win-win” outcomes, both partners benefit ting equally.

Today, in the western world we have lost this concept. The terms of trade are imposed always by the ‘stronger’ partner, the west versus the poorer south – the south where most of the natural resources are lodged. Mother Earth’s assets have been and are coveted by the west – or north – for building and maintaining a lifestyle in luxury, abundance and waste. This trend has lasted for centuries of western colonialism: Exploitation, loot, evisceration and rape of entire peoples of the Global South by the Global North, to use the current soothing World Bank lingo.

The New Silk Road, or BRI, is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s brainchild. It’s based on the same ancient principles, adjusted to the 21st Century, building bridges between peoples, exchanging goods, research, education, knowledge, cultural wisdom, peacefully, harmoniously and ‘win-win’ style. On 7 September 2013, Xi presented BRI at Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University. He spoke about “People-to-People Friendship and Creating a better Future”. He referred to the Ancient Silk Road of more than 2,100 years ago, that flourished during China’s Western Han Dynasty (206 BC to 24 AD).

President Xi’s vision may be shaping the world of the 21st Century. The Belt and Road Initiative is designed and modeled loosely according to the Ancient Silk Road. President Xi launched this ground-breaking project soon after assuming the Presidency in 2013. The endeavor’s idea is to connect the world with transport routes, infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, teaching and research institutions, cultural exchange and much more. Since 2017, enshrined in China’s Constitution, BRI has become the flagship for China’s foreign policy.

BRI is literally building bridges and connecting people of different continents and nations. The purpose of the New Silk Road is “to construct a unified large market and make full use of both international and domestic markets, through cultural exchange and integration, to enhance mutual understanding and trust of member nations, ending up in an innovative pattern with capital inflows, talent pool, and technology database”. BRI is a perfect vehicle for building peacefully a World Community with a Shared Future for Mankind – which was the theme of an international Forum held in Shanghai, from 5-7 November, a tribute to China’s 70th Anniversary of her Revolution and achievements – with a vision into the future.

BRI is a global development strategy adopted by the Chinese Government. Already today BRI has investments involving more than 150 countries and international organizations – and growing – in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. BRI is a multitrillion investment scheme, for transport routes on land and sea, as well as construction of industrial and energy infrastructure and energy exploration – as well as trade among connected countries. Unlike WTO (World Trade Organization), BRI is encouraging nations to benefit from their comparative advantages, creating win-win situations. In essence, BRI is to develop mutual understanding and trust among member nations, allowing for free capital flows, a pool of experts and access to a BRI-based technology data base.

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THE PROBLEM WITH SETTLEMENTS IS NOT ONLY THAT THEY ARE ILLEGAL. IT’S THAT THEY ARE IMMORAL

“If giving some people liberty while denying it to others because of their race, ethnicity or religion was wrong in the segregated South, why isn’t it wrong in the West Bank?”

The Trump administration said Israeli settlements in the West Bank don’t violate international law. That’s absurd. Among international lawyers, the consensus that settlements are illegal rivals the consensus among international scientists that humans contribute to climate change. As UCLA’s Dov Waxman has pointed out, the legal advisor to Israel’s own foreign ministry admitted that “civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention” after Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967.

But critics who condemn the Trump administration for disregarding international law are missing the deeper point. So are critics who condemn it for undermining the two-state solution.

Fundamentally, the problem with settlements is neither legal nor geopolitical. It is moral. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are institutionalized expressions of bigotry. The American and Israeli politicians who legitimize them are the moral equivalent of those politicians who legitimized Jim Crow. It’s time they be treated as such.

Settlements only exist because Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank live under a different law. Jews are Israeli citizens: They can vote for the government that controls every square inch of the West Bank. Palestinians are Israeli subjects: Permanently barred because of their ethnicity and religion from citizenship in the country in which they live. (Yes, Palestinians have at times voted for the Palestinian Authority. But the PA is not a government; it is Israel’s subcontractor. PA officials — like all West Bank Palestinians — need Israeli permission to travel from one part of the West Bank to another).

Because the Israeli government controls the West Bank, and because it is accountable to the Jews — but not the Palestinians — who live there, it has spent the last half-century seizing land on which Palestinians live and giving it to Jews. Employing an 1858 Ottoman law, it has declared much of the West Bank “state land” and then transferred that supposedly ownerless territory to Jewish settlements. According to data from Israel’s own civil administration, almost 40% of the land on which settlements reside was once owned by individual Palestinians.

Big deal, some settlement defenders argue: Lots of people live on stolen land. If a community built on land seized by force is morally illegitimate, then the New Yorkers who live on territory once owned by Native Americans have no more right to be there than the Jewish settlers in Beit El.

But there’s a difference: New York is now open to people of any religion or race. Native Amerians, as citizens of the United States, can live there. Palestinians can’t live in Beit El. Jewish settlements are Jewish-only settlements. The West Bank isn’t like New York in 2019. It’s like Mississippi in 1959. It is a territory segregated by law, separate and hideously unequal.

That’s what Benjamin Netanyahu obscures when he tweets that the Trump administration’s new settlements policy “reflects an historical truth – that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judea and Samaria.”

Of course, Jews are not foreign to the West Bank. Much of the Book of Genesis takes place there; there were Jewish communities in the West Bank before Israel’s creation. But morally, the issue is not whether Jews have the right to live in the West Bank. It’s whether Jews have the right to live there under a different law than their Palestinian neighbors.

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BIBI’S GET-OUT-OF-JAIL CARD… WAR WITH IRAN

Netanyahu has always drummed up votes by presenting himself as the great defender of Israelis.

It seems more than coincidence that as the legal noose tightens around Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israeli military have suddenly stepped up air strikes on Iranian forces based in Syria.

Playing the strongman role on national security and winning another term as prime minister would stave off prosecution over pending corruption charges.

If Netanyahu is ousted from office he will be immediately subjected to trial. A subsequent conviction on all charges could result in him facing up to 13 years in jail. A lot is at stake for Israel’s elder statesmen. At 70 years old, he is the longest-serving prime minister in the history of the Israeli state, having been elected four times already.

Therefore the longer he can hang on as premier, the longer he can postpone his day in court, as the leadership position affords a certain immunity while in office.

Israel’s current political impasse is a particularly dangerous time for Netanyahu. After two elections held earlier this year, neither Netanyahu nor his nearest rival Benny Gantz have been able to form a coalition government. Netanyahu is still the sitting PM. But lawmakers could vote for a new prime minister in the next few weeks, or else failing that the country will be forced to go to a third election in March next year

Either way, Netanyahu needs to stay in office if he wants to throw the prosecution trial into the long grass. That means the temptation will be ever-stronger for the hot-headed commando-turned-politician to rile up security tensions with Iran and Syria, as well as neighboring Palestinians. Netanyahu has always drummed up votes by presenting himself as the great defender of Israelis.

Over the past week, as a three-year criminal investigation concluded with charges being leveled against Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and abuse of power for favorable media influence, Israeli forces under his command launched deadly air strikes against Iranian targets in Syria. Reports indicated that around 23 people were killed, most of whom were Iranian military belonging to the elite Quds Force. Though Syrian media claimed that most of the attacks were intercepted. Whether Iranian personnel were killed or not, the Israeli intention is to provoke Tehra

Notably, Israeli military usually do not confirm or deny when they carry out air strikes on Syria or neighboring countries. This week, however, Israeli leaders including Netanyahu were bragging about the strikes.

Netanyahu said: “I have made clear that any who attack us, we will attack them. That is what we did tonight [November 20] toward military targets of the Iranian Quds Force and Syrian military targets.”

The Israelis claim they were responding to rockets fired from the Golan Heights. But it seems those rockets were provoked by earlier Israeli strikes on Syria just days before.

There is more than a suspicion that Israel was orchestrating the pretext for a flare up in violence. The purpose being to allow Netanyahu to dust off his war medals and flex his muscles for the electorate.

Such a ploy is in keeping with how Netanyahu over recent months has been cranking up the bellicose rhetoric. Before the elections this year in March and September, he has been declaring that if he is re-elected his government would annex large swathes of the Palestinian territory in the West Bank. In spite of international law and UN resolutions designating Israeli settlements as illegal.

US President Donald Trump obliged Netanyahu’s electioneering when the White House announced on November 18 that Washington was henceforth recognizing all Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory as legitimate. Was this Trump shifting US policy to help bail out his friend Bibi, knowing that the indictment sheet was on the way?

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THE LIES ABOUT ASSANGE MUST STOP NOW

“We have serious concerns about Mr Assange’s fitness to stand trial in February.”

Newspapers and other media in the United States, Britain and Australia have recently declared a passion for freedom of speech, especially their right to publish freely. They are worried by the “Assange effect”.

It is as if the struggle of truth-tellers like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning is now a warning to them: that the thugs who dragged Assange out of the Ecuadorean embassy in April may one day come for them.

A common refrain was echoed by the Guardian last week. The extradition of Assange, said the paper, “is not a question of how wise Mr. Assange is, still less how likable. It’s not about his character, nor his judgment. It’s a matter of press freedom and the public’s right to know.”

What the Guardian is trying to do is separate Assange from his landmark achievements, which have both profited the Guardian and exposed its own vulnerability, along with its propensity to suck up to rapacious power and smear those who reveal its double standards.

The poison that has fueled the persecution of Julian Assange is not as obvious in this editorial as it usually is; there is no fiction about Assange smearing faeces on embassy walls or being awful to his cat.

Instead, the weasel references to “character” and “judgement” and “likeability” perpetuate an epic smear which is now almost a decade old. Nils Melzer, the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, used a more apt description. “There has been,” he wrote, “a relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing.” He explains mobbing as “an endless stream of humiliating, debasing and threatening statements in the press”. This “collection ridicule” amounts to torture and could lead to Assange’s death.

Having witnessed much of what Melzer describes , I can vouch for the truth of his words. If Julian Assange were to succumb to the cruelties heaped upon him, week after week, month after month, year upon year, as doctors warn, newspapers like the Guardian will share the responsibility.

A few days ago, the Sydney Morning Herald’s man in London, Nick Miller, wrote a lazy, specious piece headlined, “Assange has not been vindicated, he has merely outwaited justice.” He was referring to Sweden’s abandonment of the so-called Assange investigation.

Miller’s report is not untypical for its omissions and distortions while masquerading as a tribune of women’s rights. There is no original work, no real inquiry: just smear.

There is nothing on the documented behaviour of a clutch of Swedish zealots who hi jacked the “allegations” of sexual misconduct against Assange and made a mockery of Swedish law and that society’s vaunted decency.

He makes no mention that in 2013, the Swedish prosecutor tried to abandon the case and emailed the Crown Prosecution Service in London to say it would no longer pursue a European Arrest Warrant, to which she received the reply: “Don’t you dare!!!” (Thanks to Stefania Maurizi of La Repubblica)

Other emails show the CPS discouraging the Swedes from coming to London to interview Assange – which was common practice – thus blocking progress that might have set him free in 2011.

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AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM DRIVING WORLD TO WAR – JOHN PILGER

It’s the spawn of the most rapacious ideology on earth: Americanism.

Australian-born John Pilger has worked for over five decades as a reporter and documentary film-maker covering wars and conflicts all over the world. In the following interview, the award-winning journalist says the world is arguably at a more perilous geopolitical juncture than even during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 at the height of the Cold War. This is because American “exceptionalism” – which, he points out, mirrors that of Nazi Germany – has developed into a hyper-rogue phase. The relentless denigration of Russia by American and Western media show that there are few red lines left to restrain aggression towards Moscow, as there were, at least, during the past Cold War. Russia and China’s refusal to bow down to Washington’s dictate is infuriating the would-be American hegemon and its desire for zerosum world domination.

John Pilger also gives his wide-ranging views on the systematic deterioration of Western mainstream journalism which has come to function as a nakedly propaganda matrix for power and corporate profit. He further condemns the ongoing persecution and torture of fellow-Australian publisher Julian Assange who is being held in a maximum-security British prison commonly used for holding mass murderers and convicted terrorists. Assange is being persecuted for telling the truth and for exposing huge crimes by the US and Britain, says Pilger. It is a grim warning of a covert war that is being conducted against independent journalism and free speech, and, more ominously, indicative of a slide towards police-state fascism in so-called Western “democracies”.

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ROGUE AGENCIES HAVE BEEN ABUSING THEIR POWERS FOR DECADES

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls. A nation of sheep will soon have a government of wolves. –Edward R. Murrow

To allow the President or any rogue government agency or individual to disregard the rule of law whenever, wherever and however it chooses and operate “above the law” is exactly how a nation of sheep gives rise to a government of wolves.

To be clear: this is not about Donald Trump. Or at least it shouldn’t be just about Trump.

This is a condemnation of every government toady at every point along the political spectrum—right, left and center—who has conspired to expand the federal government’s powers at the expense of the citizenry.

For too long now, the American people have played politics with their principles and turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient, allowing Congress, the White House and the Judiciary to wreak havoc with their freedoms and act in violation of the rule of law.

“We the people” are paying the price for it now.

We are paying the price every day that we allow the government to continue to wage its war on the American People, a war that is being fought on many fronts: with bullets and tasers, with surveillance cameras and license readers, with intimidation and propaganda, with court rulings and legislation, with the collusion of every bureaucrat who dances to the tune of corporate handouts while on the government’s payroll, and most effectively of all, with the complicity of the American people, who continue to allow themselves to be easily manipulated by their politics, distracted by their pastimes, and acclimated to a world in which government corruption is the norm.

Don’t keep falling for the Deep State’s ploys.

This entire impeachment process is a manufactured political circus—a shell game—aimed at distracting the public from the devious treachery of the American police state, which continues to lock down the nation and strip the citizenry of every last vestige of constitutional safeguards that have historically served as a bulwark against tyranny.

Has President Trump overstepped his authority and abused his powers?

Without a doubt.

Then again, so did Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and almost every president before them.

Trump is not the first president to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the president. He is just the most recent.

If we were being honest and consistent in holding government officials accountable, you’d have to impeach almost every president in recent years for operating “above the law,” unbound by the legislative or judicial branches of the government.

When we refer to the “rule of law,” that’s constitutional shorthand for the idea that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

When the government and its agents no longer respect the rule of law—the Constitution— or believe that it applies to them, then the very contract on which this relationship is based becomes invalid.

Although the Constitution requires a separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government in order to ensure accountability so that no one government agency becomes all-powerful, each successive president over the past 30 years has, through the negligence of Congress and the courts, expanded the reach and power of the presidency by adding to his office’s list of extraordinary orders, directives and special privileges

All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to act as a dictator by operating above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

Yet in operating above the law, it’s not just the president who has become a law unto himself.

The government itself has become an imperial dictator, an overlord, a king.

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STATE DEPARTMENT RELEASES DETAILED ACCOUNTS OF BIDEN/UKRAINE CORRUPTION

US State Department releases detailed accusations of corruption against the Bidens.

A liberal watchdog group’s attempt to nail Rudy Giuliani has backfired in spectacular fashion after their FOIA request resulted in the US State Department releasing detailed accusations of corruption against the Bidens – based on interviews with former Ukrainian officials who were in charge of the investigations.

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the group American Oversight, the State Department on Friday night released almost 100 pages of records detailing efforts by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate corruption.

While American Oversight’s ‘gotcha’ is that Giuliani had “multiple contacts” with Mike Pompeo and others while investigating Ukraine corruption, they completely ignore interview notes containing detailed allegations by former Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin – who Joe Biden had fired, as well as his successor, prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko – who “believes Mr. Viktor Shokin the former Prosecutor General is honest.”

Viktor Shokin:

On a January 23, 2019 phone call between Shokin and Giuliani, Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas and George Boyle, Shokin said: “He was appointed to the position of General Prosecutor of Ukraine from 2015 until April of 2016, when he was removed at the request of Mr. Joseph Biden the Vice President of the United States.”

“He [Shokin] became involved in a case against Mr. Mykola Zlochevsky the former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine. The case was opened as a result of Mr. Zlochevsky giving himself/company permits to drill for gas and oil in Ukraine. Mr. Zlochevsky is also the owner of Burisma Holdings.”

Mr. Shokin stated that there are documents that list five (5) criminal cases in which Mr. Zlochevesky is listed, with the main case being for issuing illegal gas exploration permits. The following complaints are in the criminal case.

Namely:

Mr. Zlochevsky was laundering money.

He obtained assets by corrupt acts bribery.

Mr. Zlochevsky removed approximately twenty three million US dollars out of Ukraine without permission.

While seated as the Minister he approved two addition entities to receive permits for gas exploration.

Mr. Zlochevsky was the owner of two secret companies that were part of Burisma Holdings and gave those companies permits which made it possible for him to profit while he was the sitting Minister.

Mr Shokin further stated that there were several Burisma board appointments were made in 2014 as follows:

Hunter Biden son of Vice President Joseph Biden.

Joseph Blade former CIA employee assigned to Anti-Terrorist Unit.

Alesksander Kwasnieski former President of Poland.

Devon Archer roomate to the Christopher Heinz the step-son of Mr. John Kerry United States Secretary of State.

“Mr. Shokin stated that these appointments were made by Mr. Slochevsky in order to protect himself.”

Shokin then details how in July 2015, “US Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt told him that the investigation has to be handled with white gloves, which according to Mr. Shokin, that implied do nothing. On or about September 2015 Mr. Pyatt gave a speech in Odessa where he stated that the cases were not investigated correctly and that Mr. Shokin may be corrupt.”

“Mr. Shokin further stated that on February of 2016 warrants were placed on the accounts of multiple people in Ukraine. There were requests for information on Hunter Biden to which nothing was received.”

“It is believed that Hunter Biden receives a salary, commission plus one million dollars.”

“President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko [who Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees] told Mr. Shokin not to investigate Burisma as it was not in the interest of Joe and/or Hunter Biden. Mr. Shokin was called into Mr. Poroshenko’s office and told that the investigation into Burisma and the Managing Director where Hunter Biden is on the board, has caused Joe Biden to hold up one billion dollars in US aid to Ukraine.

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THE REAL BOMBSHELL OF THE IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS

The permanent government will not allow a change in our aggressive interventionist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russia.

The most shocking thing about the House impeachment hearings to this point is not a “smoking gun” witness providing irrefutable evidence of quid pro quo. It’s not that President Trump may or may not have asked the Ukrainians to look into business deals between then-Vice President Biden’s son and a Ukrainian oligarch.

The most shocking thing to come out of the hearings thus far is confirmation that no matter who is elected President of the United States, the permanent government will not allow a change in our aggressive interventionist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russia.

Even more shocking is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are bothered in the slightest!

Take Lt. Colonel Vindman, who earned high praise in the mainstream media. He did not come forth with firsthand evidence that President Trump had committed any “high crimes” or “misdemeanors.” He brought a complaint against the President because he was worried that Trump was shifting US policy away from providing offensive weapons to the Ukrainian government!

He didn’t think the US president had the right to suspend aid to Ukraine because he supported providing aid to Ukraine.

According to his testimony, Vindman’s was concerned over “influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the inter-agency.”

“Consensus views of the inter-agency” is another word for “deep state.”

Vindman continued, “While my inter-agency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined US government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”

Let that sink in for a moment: Vindman did not witness any crimes, he just didn’t think the elected President of the United States had any right to change US policy toward Ukraine or Russia!

Likewise, his boss on the National Security Council Staff, Fiona Hill, sounded more like she had just stepped out of the 1950s with her heated Cold War rhetoric. Citing the controversial 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment” put together by then-CIA director John Brennan’s “hand-picked” analysts, she asserted that, “President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter US foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine.”

And who gets to decide US foreign policy objectives in Europe? Not the US President, according to government bureaucrat Fiona Hill. In fact, Hill told Congress that, “If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention.”

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THE VEHICLE TO TRANSFORM ONCE BROKE FAMILY INTO MEGA-MULTIMILLIONAIRES

The Clinton Foundation’s donations have plummeted by $49.6 million since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election prompting the “pay to play” debate.

The Clinton Foundation has been in the news again after the entity’s tax records showed a new multi-million fall in donations. Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel explained the entity’s financial losses and why further scrutiny of the charity may expose new violations and conflicts of interests.

The Clinton Foundation’s 2018 tax return documents indicated a $16.8 million loss on revenue of $30.7 million in 2018. All in all the Clinton Foundation’s donations have plummeted by $49.6 million since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election prompting the “pay to play” debate

Neither a ‘Public Charity’ Nor Just a ‘Charity’

Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel, who has been looking into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for more than four years, says that the answer to the question why the charity’s donations dropped 90 percent since 2014 is the loss of political power by the Clintons.

“To me, it seems clear that the steep drop off in government support for the Clinton Foundation is Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss during 2016, and then her petulant refusal to accept that she lost because she campaigned poorly and arrogantly, turning off voters in key states who were captivated by Donald Trump’s message and promises to change the status quo for the better,” Ortel notes.

However, the problem is bigger than just an alleged conflict of interests: the Clinton Foundation cannot be called a “public charity” or just a “charity” to begin with due to numerous violations of the IRS regulations concerning tax-exempt entities.

Ortel takes a walk down the memory lane recalling that “The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation” (the entity’s original name) was “granted federal tax-exemption status on 29 January 1998 retroactive to 23 October 1997 to store the records and other materials created or received during Bill Clinton’s two presidential terms, and to allow visitors to study these Presidential Records (a defined term under US law) in Little Rock, Arkansas.”

Since that time the organisation has considerably expanded the scope of its actions, including educational and healthcare initiatives while one cannot find any evidence IRS has “ever validly authorised” the entity “for any purpose outside of Little Rock, Arkansas” which is required under US laws. According to Ortel, some of organisation’s initiatives, such as the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), went beyond the scope of charitable activities.

On the other hand, a genuine “public charity” must be actually independent from its creators and cannot be dominated, at any time, by a particular family which, according to the public record, is obviously not the case with the Clinton Foundation, he notes.

“Instead, many pronouncements of numerous Clinton family members in press releases and other published media show that the organization served as a vehicle to transform a once financially ruined family (while Bill was President) into the mega-multi-millionaires they have since become,” he suggests.

Neither Validly Organised Nor Properly Audited

Furthermore, the entity was neither validly organised nor properly audited, according to the analyst.

“It was incorporated on 23 October 1997, but only adopted Bylaws on 23 December 1997,” Ortel explains. “This means, that for a crucial period in 1997, when Bill Clinton was president, and when Bill and Hillary ‘selected’ the Little Rock site of the Presidential Library (in early November 1997), there was no organisation because Trustees had not come together and adopted Bylaws or even obtained the crucial ‘Federal Employer Identification Number’ that is absolutely required in the United States to operate a lawfully constituted nonprofit corporation.”

In any other case such flaws would have caused the IRS to shut down the charity at inception, but not the Clinton Foundation, apparently because Bill Clinton was the US president through 20 January 2001, the analyst presumes.

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